Pay Attention!

I had never heard of Vantage Point (2008) when my son brought it home. He had seen previews on other DVDs, and thought it looked interesting. I wasn't even planning to watch it, figuring I'd just continue reading my book. Well, it caught me right away, and 90 minutes later, it was over, and I don't think I'd looked at my book once.

The movie tells the story of an assassination attempt on the President of the US (the Secret Service guys call him POTUS, which is an unfortunate acronym). Dennis Quaid plays Secret Service Agent Thomas Barnes, back on his first assignment after taking a bullet for the president six months ago. They are at a counter-terrorism conference in Spain as events unfold. And unfold again. And again. And again. Our understanding of what really happened grows as we see the same events from another vantage point. There is a Spanish undercover cop, a TV news director (Sigourney Weaver), the President (William Hurt), an American tourist complete with camcorder (Forest Whitaker) among others. The action never stops, only pausing while the clock rewinds and starts again. It takes paying attention to follow all the twists and turns, so don't try to watch this while you do something else. The story and the acting really held my attention - when it was over I was astonished that 90 minutes had gone by.

This won't ever be my favorite action movie, or my favorite puzzle movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent watching it, and have found myself thinking of it again several times over the last few days. What do you think?

Lots of violence and intensity in the scenes, no sex or nudity, a little cursing. The MPAA rated this film PG-13.